Theodore Dalrymple: ‘Her death affected me to a surprising degree’

Theodore Dalrymple writes:

She never had time to write that letter. Her decline was so rapid that she died before she could write it. Whether, had she written it, it would have been for good or ill, I am still undecided; but what is certain is that the thought of her unfathomable grief moved me greatly.

To know that her beloved son would know nothing of her, that her good and devoted husband would, through no demerit of his, soon cease to remember her other than at odd moments, for he would have to resume normal life, and to die so young through no fault of her own, were sorrows so deep that I felt almost ashamed of my own good fortune which I have so little appreciated and so much complained of.